Thanks Gary, I thought that the roasts weren't great just from the curves. The Ugandan had a little flick, which seems to have given a roasty edge in the cup. I think this was a combination of the environmental temp throwing me off, and the jumpy data from a too small batch. The Colombian ran out of momentum a little compared to my plan, and looked like it might be a bit baked. Somewhat bland in the cup, but not too bad, and no unpleasant chemical flavors. Still a little early for my taste, will see if anything develops.

After that rather disappointing session, i roasted the Huila Palestina pink Bourbon from Burmans. I noted that it had only a one insect damaged bean from a 300g charge. Far better than the mixed Bourbon. I also roasted the Daterra masterpiece "armadillo", and a Costa Rican natural - Finca La Bella - from Captain's coffee, both of which were defect free, save for a couple of broken beans.

ShotClock wrote:What should i be looking for regarding taste for these potential defects?

mkane's response is good; look for anything distinctly "un-coffee". Pay attention to the aftertaste. If you have something that's unpleasant and lingers for a long time; anything chemical or musty, then that might be something that's a green defect rather than a roast defect. Having said that ...

ShotClock wrote:After that rather disappointing session, i roasted the Huila Palestina pink Bourbon from Burmans. I noted that it had only a one insect damaged bean from a 300g charge. Far better than the mixed Bourbon. I also roasted the Daterra masterpiece "armadillo", and a Costa Rican natural - Finca La Bella - from Captain's coffee, both of which were defect free, save for a couple of broken beans.

Let me repeat that the absence of visual defects doesn't tell you that the coffee will be good, nor does the presence of some visually diagnosable beans mean that the coffee will be bad. You can have something like 39 insect damaged beans per 350g and still qualify as specialty grade without points penalties under the SCA method. Some visible defects will disqualify the coffee entirely. There's a table that sets it out. But it's a two step inquiry; first, does it fail on a green basis, then you taste it.

Defects like phenolic, acetic acid ferment, past crop, etc, are not visible.

What you've posted above are technically defects, insofar as there are insect damaged holes, cracks and pulper nips but if there isn't mould visible on it, there's a chance you won't even be able to taste it. A few of the ugly beans might not even be visual defects under the SCA classification system. None of them looked like primary defects that disqualify the coffee from specialty classification by themselves.

You might well be happy with coffee that isn't technically specialty grade, too.

I posted some visual defects in the other thread because it was easy to give an example of defects that's hard for people to argue are not defects; I have said before, and repeat, that visual defects aren't the end of it.

This was culled from 400grams. And I bought 10 pounds of this.

As a slight digression, I always grade newly-purchased coffee following this standard procedure, as explained by Trish Rothgeb: That way, if there is an issue, then standardized feedback can be given back to the green vendor.

ETA: Another thing which is mentioned in passing in the video is to get some sandpaper, sand a bean, and sniff. Do this with good beans and defect beans and you might be surprised how much difference there is in the smell. Illy is(was?) really big on this as part of their quality programs.

baldheadracing wrote:As a slight digression, I always grade newly-purchased coffee following this standard procedure, as explained by Trish Rothgeb...

I was fortunate enough to win an auction prize of 6-hrs w/Trish and Nick years ago, where this was a segment.

mkane wrote:This was culled from 400grams. And I bought 10 pounds of this.
image

Reminds me of some Mexican 'floor sweep' (barely) green that a family member brought back and asked me to roast. That amount is about what I picked out of a 200 gram batch...

To each their own, but I stick with just a handful of green sellers and never have issues and I am doing upwards of 10 lbs monthly for personal consumption. Might have 1-2 beans from a 200 gram batch and even then it's nitpicking (size or fracture) and no real defects that would matter in the demitasse.

Those beans above were bought from a local coffee roaster. I won't mention who the distributor was. I'll go back again and buy some more from a different lot and compare.

We most often buy local for us mainly to ease shipping costs and have never had beans that look like those. I realize there are a bazillion beans in a 60-kilo bag that need to be gone over but I've never seen beans like those. There are also a few stones tossed in.

Thanks for the video

It's a shame this thread didn't gain any traction.

Totally agree. The intent of the thread was lost on many.

Upside is we now know who the best roasters are

Allrighty, let me throw this one out to the floor.

I have this central american washed coffee that I have roasted a few times, 2020-2021 harvest, bourbon and typica, call it 1800 masl. I haven't tasted it for a little while, but my roasts have been pretty flat, kind of muddy and with a distinct, papery, flat quality to them. I'd expect this to be sweet, crisp and maybe to have some stonefruit to it.

And to drive home the point, which people seem to be missing, the green looks picture perfect. No visual defects at all.

I've got a good guess, but why do you guys think this coffee sucks? Did I screw up the roast? Entirely possible. If so, how? Or did I buy bad green? And, if so, what's bad about it?

LuckyMark wrote:Totally agree. The intent of the thread was lost on many.

Seems like if you are willing to blindly assert that anything anyone doing at home is incredibly high quality and brilliant, you will have unending support and no objections. But there are some people who, for whatever reason, need to dig their heels in and assert that their coffee is the best. As I've said, I don't have an issue with people being happy with whatever. I'm just concerned that the echo-chamber of praise for home roasting will have new home roasters start with unrealistic expectations and get disappointed. I thought about it a bit more, and in some senses, it may be more to my advantage to just shut up about it. Producers benefit from having an outlet for coffee with issues (eg. insect damage, ferment defect, mould, phenolics, etc) and producers that produce stuff that commands very high prices may nonetheless have coffees with issues that they need to move, for example if they have unripe cherry that has ended up being harvested and they want to process it with minimal expenditure because it's never going to command high returns, or if they have diversified into coffees that are very hardy but less good in the cup to have a contingency for disease pressure (eg. broca or rust). So, in some senses, consumers being misled into buying coffee that they think are higher quality (eg. because they've bought into what an online echo-chamber has to say about them, or because the vendor has actively misled them) may well be a net benefit for me, by subsidising the production of coffees I enjoy. On the other hand, people who don't like that coffee will do their own work to get coffee that suits them. So maybe I should just shut up.